HOW TO TEACH CHILDREN TO TELL TIME

How to teach young children to tell time. Teaching ideas and printable resources to help you teach the concept of time and how to tell time in class.

Time is a tricky concept and telling time can be something many children take years to understand and do accurately. Teaching time to young children can be difficult as it's such an abstract concept in many ways. Hands on play, games, visual supports and lots and lots of practice can help children understand how to tell time and the concept.

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TIME AS A CONCEPT

To effectively teach young children how to tell time you need to first look at the concept of time.What is time? How does time pass? How do we record this passing of time?There are so much vocabulary that can be related to the concept of time - seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, decades, centuries, morning, afternoon, night, sunrise, sunset, today, tomorrow, yesterday, last week, next week. There are many tools we use like clocks, watches, timetables, calendars and diaries to keep track of time.Timelines are one of the best tools to introduces children to when first talking about time as you can create a visual to help illustrate the passing of time.In class we started by talking about what we have already done that morning - woke up, had breakfast, got dressed, brushed our teeth and hair, packed our school bags and travelled to school. We talked about what we still were to do today using our visual timetable as support. I had the children quickly draw five things they did yesterday and then in pairs, their partner had to try and put them back in the correct order.We then created our own classroom timeline recording the times each event happened. The children each drew a picture to match the time.

Don't they look amazing displayed across our classroom wall! My students are familiar with the idea of a timeline as I have a term timeline displayed year round which I add photos and descriptions of our activities every week to. It's been a fantastic way to communicate with families and the children have been able to see how far they've come. You can spot it under our school day timeline.

TELLING TIME

We have also been practicing telling time.We've built clocks with our number rocks. We've made simple clocks from paper plates. We made paper watches to wear home. We've drawn clocks.

We've been using our blank clock face cards for our Mental Maths routine to practice telling time to the hour and then half hour on our analogue and digital clock faces.I highly recommend Teaching Time's Whole Class Clock for your IWB and their Stop the Clock game too. My class has loved trying to beat their times while matching the clock faces.

We' also been playing with clocks in our maths centres. We've been using these peg clock cards, played memory games with digital and analogue clocks and used our 12 sided dice to roll and build a clock to match the time before writing it on our clock face cards.

Once my class became a little more confident, I introduced these playdough mats and time cards to our math centres. The children choose a time to make using the mat and their playdough then flip the card over to check their clock is correct. It's been a great way to build some independence into our centres.

My students have also enjoyed playing with these clock face cards. They grab a small stack each then use them to play memory with.

This set includes -

With 45 pages of different resources perfect for introducing the concept of time to young children, this pack concentrates on telling time to the hour and half hour.

Hour and half hour cards with both analogue and digital times for classroom display

Make a clockface worksheet

Complete the digital time cards

Complete the analogue time cards

Match the clocks (hour only plus hour and half hour worksheet)

Draw the clocks (hour only plus hour and half hour worksheet)

Three part clock face cards with analogue, digital and written time for all hour and half hour times

'What's The Time?' Hour and Half Hour Clip Cards

'I Have, Who Has?' card game for hour and half hour times

Teaching suggestions are included for each resources. Initial and final assessment tasks also included.

Designed to help children consolidate their telling of time to the hour and half hour, our Expansion Pack also includes resources to teach quarter past and quarter to time.

Perfect for Year 2!

Aligned to Australian Curriculum outcomes, this Telling Time expansion pack is designed for use with our Learning To Tell Time Pack and includes printables suitable for whole class instruction, time telling games, Clip Cards and other resources for individual and small group Math Centre activities.

This set includes -

* Complete the digital time cards for quarter to/quarter past times* Complete the analogue time cards for quarter to/quarter past times* Match the clocks (hour, half hour, quarter to and quarter past worksheet)* Three part clock face cards with analogue, digital and written time for all hour, half hour, quarter past and quarter to times * 'What's The Time?' Quarter Past and Quarter To Clip Cards* 'I Have, Who Has?' card game with hour, half hour, quarter past and quarter to times * Make Time Workmat for hour/half hour/quarter past/quarter to times* Connect Four Time Telling Game